Both oil giant BP and vacuum cleaner magnate Sir James Dyson have warned of trouble ahead if the UK does not tackle its engineering skills crisis.
Trevor Garlick, BP‘s head of North Sea operations told the Sunday Telegraph that the FTSE 100 firm planned to recruit between 150 and 300 new workers per annum over the coming years to help support an expected increase in production at its Schiehallion and Loyal oil fields to the west of the Shetland Islands.
But one of the biggest challenges that the company faced was simply finding suitable candidates with suitable skills to fill vacant posts. When asked what the biggest barrier to growth at BP in future would be, Garlick said: “Skills – getting hold of the right people is a real issue for us. We are hiring lots of people, but we are also an exporter of a couple of hundred people to other regions. We are a centre recruiting elsewhere.”
BP’s North Sea operations were a “training ground” for the rest of the company, which quickly snapped up talented workers to fill positions overseas, he explained. The problem was that there insufficient people in the UK with the “right skills” to fill the remaining gaps.
Although BP announced earlier this year that it would sell its stakes in gas fields in the southern North Sea, Garlick said that the growth potential of the area as a whole was huge. The firm believes that there are still up to 450 million barrels of oil in the region.
According to oil and gas skills and workforce development industry body Opito, employers expect to create 10,000 new oil and gas jobs over the next five years, but more than half warn that attracting appropriately skilled personnel will be a key operational challenge.
Sir James Dyson also warned, meanwhile, that he may be forced to move his research and development operations overseas if the UK does not train more engineers because a lack of graduate and post-graduate skills was putting a break on his business.
"There are not enough engineers coming out of universities. We can’t hire people quick enough and it’s holding up projects. If they can’t get the engineers, British companies will move abroad," he said.
Asked if he would consider moving his own operations abroad if the situation did not improve, Dyson added: "Well, yes – we’d have to. It’s the last thing we want to do. We’re trying to recruit here, but in the event we can’t get people, we’ll have to consider it."
Dyson controversially moved the manufacture of its flagship vacuum cleaner and other products to Malaysia in 2003, but still undertakes all of its R&D in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
